Almost since the beginning of photography with the Daguerreotype, photographs of space and astronomy have been of interest to people. In 1946 the first photograph of Earth as seen from space was taken, “The grainy, black-and-white photos were taken from an altitude of 65 miles by a 35-millimeter motion picture camera riding on a V-2 missile launched from the White Sands Missile Range” (Reichhardt, 2006). One of the images that came back looked like this:
View of Earth from a camera on V-2 #13, launched October 24, 1946. (White Sands Missile Range/Applied Physics Laboratory)
22 years later, during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, astronaut William Anders took the Earthrise photo, which has been declared “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken” by nature photographer Galen Rowell, “Captured on Christmas Eve, 1968, near the end of one of the most tumultuous years the U.S. had ever known, the Earthrise photograph inspired contemplation of our fragile existence and our place in the cosmos” (Halstead, 1999).
Earthrise (NASA Images)
To understand the significance of the Earthrise photo, it is important to understand the context of when it was taken. Anyone who is familiar with US history could tell you that 1968 was a tough year for the world, the Vietnam War was happening, Czechoslovakia was living under a Soviet crackdown, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been assassinated and cities across the country had been torn by rioting. When this image was taken in December of 1968 it provided people with a view of the Earth without political boundaries, and it emphasized just how small and finite our planet is in the grand scheme of things. In a 2008 book, “Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth,” Robert Poole claims that the picture was the spiritual nascence of the environmental movement, writing that “it is possible to see that Earthrise marked the tipping point, the moment when the sense of the space age flipped from what it meant for space to what it means for Earth” (2008).
NASA proclaimed that the picture is evidence of the Earth’s insignificant position as just one planet in the solar system, but to those back on Earth its main force was as a picture of home. “It’s the picture that was credited with starting the environmental movement, that has been on postage stamps and t-shirts, album covers and coffee mugs, that has been used as a hopeful symbol of global unity at peace rallies and health conferences, on Christmas cards and in works of art” (Kluger, 2013).
There’s no denying that the photograph is a striking image, but I think that this photograph, and others like it, are significant not so much because of their content, but because of what they represent to the viewers. In fact, it can be argued for most famous photographs that it is not always the composition of a photograph so much as the meaning behind it that makes an image significant. The photograph was not on the schedule of photos that the astronauts were supposed to take, but was the result of a serendipitous turn of the spacecraft and the astronaut’s decision that it was too beautiful an image to not capture. Since then, the Earthrise image has been largely credited with beginning the environmental movement in the US, as well as indirectly leading to the start of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.
To mark the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 8 "Earthrise" photograph, NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio recreated the moment the photograph was taken, exactly as the astronauts saw it, using data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Sources
Australian Broadcasting Corporation. (1999). The Earthrise Photograph. Retrieved From: http://www.abc.net.au/science/moon/earthrise.htm
Halstead, D. (1999). Earthrise, 1968. The Digital Journalist. Retrieved From: http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0309/lm11.html
Kluger, J. (2013, December 24). Earthrise on Christmas Eve: The Picture that Changed the World. Time Magazine. Retrieved From: http://science.time.com/2013/12/24/earthrise-on-christmas-eve-the-picture-that-changed-the-world/photo/earthrise1/
McKie, R. (2008, November 29). The Mission That Changed Everything. The Guardian. Retrieved From: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2008/nov/30/apollo-8-mission
NASA. (1968). Earthrise. Retrieved From: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1249.html#.UzwoeahdXuR
Neuman, S. (2013, December 23). On Anniversary Of Apollo 8, How The 'Earthrise' Photo Was Made. National Public Radio. Retrieved From: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/12/23/256605845/on-anniversary-of-apollo-8-how-the-earthrise-photo-was-made
Poole, R. (2008). Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Reichhard, T. (2006, November). The First Photo From Space. Air and Space Magazine. Retrieved From: http://www.airspacemag.com/space/the-first-photo-from-space-13721411/?no-ist=
Steigerwald, B. (2013, December 20). NASA Releases New Earthrise Simulation Video. NASA. Retrieved From: http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-releases-new-earthrise-simulation-video/#.UzwclqhdXuQ
Wilford, J.N. (2009, July 13). On Hand for Space History, as Superpowers Spar. The New York Times. Retrieved From: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/science/space/14mission.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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